Free Flame by John Lutz

toward where Carver was seated at the round white table. He was impeccably dressed as always. Maybe even slept that way. Tailored cream-colored suit, lavender shirt, mauve tie, black shoes that looked made for dancing. Carver couldn’t remember ever seeing him sweat. Gold glittered on his wrists, his fingers, his tie clasp. He was a tall, slim-waisted man with broad shoulders and a large, noble head. Half Mexican and half Italian, he was handsome in the classic Latin manner, with a sharp profile, gentle dark eyes, and sleek black hair the wind never dared to muss. Watching him approach, Carver wondered when he’d stop walking and break into a tango.
    He smiled at Carver; perfect white teeth in a gold complexion. “Have I told you that yours is a beautiful woman, amigo ?”
    “Yeah, but you probably told her more often.”
    Desoto unbuttoned his suitcoat and sat down in the white metal chair opposite Carver’s. As he adjusted the chair’s position, steel legs scraped noisily over the bricks. He said, “I want to make sure you know you’re lucky. That you appreciate her.”
    “We were just talking about that,” Carver said. The scraping of the metal chair legs had started the steady ringing in his ears again. Like a distant tuning fork vibrating. He tried to ignore it, regard it as background noise, like the sound of the sea. “She’s aware I appreciate her.”
    “As it should be,” Desoto said. “Women are too often taken for granted. Even women like Edwina. The best things in life we take for granted, you notice?”
    “That’s because they’re the steadiest.”
    The breeze got under the table’s umbrella. Lifted it slightly and snapped the material taut. The umbrella shaft moved with the wind.
    “Thanks for coming here,” Carver said, changing the subject. “I’d have been glad to drive over to Orlando.”
    Desoto shrugged. “No trouble. I had police business in Vero Beach, so I was gonna be in the area. Planned on dropping in on you anyway.”
    Carver nudged his beer can with a knuckle. “Want one of these? Or anything else to drink?”
    Desoto shook his head. “Edwina already asked and I told her no thanks.” He rested his elbows on the table and folded his hands. Gold cuff links peeked out from beneath his suitcoat sleeves. “I didn’t like the way you sounded on the phone. You in some kinda trouble, amigo ?”
    Carver said, “I stepped—or I guess I was pushed—into something nastier and deeper than I suspected.” He told Desoto about Wesley-Renway coming to his office, the car bombing, the pressure-forged arrangement with McGregor, the two hard cases in Wesley’s condo in Fort Lauderdale.
    When he was finished he felt better. Noticed the ringing in his ears had stopped.
    Desoto had listened quietly, with a calm, almost melancholy expression on his dark and dramatic features. Then he said, “That McGregor, he’s some asshole, eh?”
    “He hasn’t changed,” Carver said. “Still giving ambition a bad name.”
    “This Renway is still missing?”
    “Far as I know. Though nobody’s reported him as such. Nobody around who cares, really.”
    “That’s kinda curious, eh? That Wesley would say he’s this average-joe kinda guy Renway, living in a trailer here in Del Moray.”
    “There’s a lot I’m curious about,” Carver said. “Can you contact somebody in Miami without making ripples?”
    “You know I can.”
    “Find out what there is to know about Wesley. And about a guy named Ralph Palmer. Hispanic, probably Cuban. About six feet tall, speaks with a slight accent. Handles guns as casually as if they were cooking utensils. I asked McGregor to check, but you know how that’ll go. If he does come up with something it won’t reach me, especially if it’s valuable information.”
    “True,” Desoto said. “He sees information as currency. He isn’t wrong about that, but he wants to hoard it and get rich, spend it only when he can get the most in return. Works for him, up to